When we ask the members of senior leadership teams to identify their mission as a team, what we hear are things like “to drive profits” or “to build shareholder value.” None of them articulates this mission in terms of creating a culture in which people can thrive and do their best work. As a result, people don’t excel.

But isn’t that what corporate leadership is all about? Isn’t a culture where people can thrive and do their best work the foundation for driving profits and building shareholder value?

Most corporate executives would answer in the affirmative … yet many lack a realistic understanding of what defines their current culture. Without this understanding, senior leaders can’t create the kind of culture they need to strengthen market leadership and optimize their bottom line.

Poor communication, low trust and unresolved conflicts are only symptoms of the underlying problem within and among senior level management teams -- a conflict of values. Such conflict is like a cultural “cold war” among powerful individuals competing for influence. Successful executives are going to promote different values -- evidenced in their strategies, behaviors and overall leadership style, based upon what has worked for them in the past. It is altogether natural that there will be conflicts.

Frequently, corporate leaders don’t even agree on the “what,” but most often the disagreement is about the “how.” How do we become market leaders? Do we do it primarily by focusing internally and creating an environment in which our people can thrive? Or do we do it by focusing externally on the customer?

Other questions also illuminate this disharmony:

• How do we best enable our people to thrive -- through individual initiative or teamwork?
• Do we best achieve our goals through centralized controls or by enabling flexibility and creativity?
• What is the appropriate balance between these inherently conflicting values … and how do we manage that conflict?

To avoid conflict -- which, “coincidentally,” enables personal agendas to prevail -- executives will nod their heads in acquiescence to the company’s or team’s stated values. But unless these underlying conflicts are put on the table and fully debated, and there is mutual accountability among the team members for promoting and defending the desired culture, the “cold war” will continue to drain productivity.

Lack of accountability in many ways defines the culture and inhibits change. Let’s say there’s a high-performing chief technology officer or chief marketing officer who’s a real genius, someone upon whom the chief executive officer is totally dependent. But the CTO or CMO is also abrasive with his staff -- and even his colleagues -- to the point where people do not communicate when they need to or resolve problems effectively. Although this behavior may violate the company’s explicit core values, it is tolerated because the executive is a star who is critical to the success of the organization. But these behaviors “dis-integrate” the culture and sub-optimize engagement and productivity.

Unless you show offending executives how their behaviors adversely impact the cohesiveness of the management team and organizational productivity, they have no motivation to change. More often than not, these executives are reasonable people with strong “bottom-line” values who are just unaware of the impact of their behavior on productivity. They haven’t received the kind of feedback that will motivate them to change. But if you show them objective and subjective data of how their collective and individual behaviors negatively impact the organization, you will appeal to the one thing they can agree on: the opportunity to significantly improve productivity. Only then will otherwise intractable and often destructive behaviors begin to change. Those who are indifferent to these consequences belong neither on the management team nor in the company. Their impact is too corrosive -- and potentially life-threatening to the organization.

Team cohesiveness correlates highly to cultural integrity and productivity. At the end of the day, culture is about values evidenced by the decisions that management makes every day. One of the most important and courageous decisions senior team leaders can make is to assess the effect they are having on productivity, and to hold themselves mutually accountable to their people for creating a thriving, generative culture.

Next issue: Using technology to conduct high-impact assessments and initiate transformational change.

As business organizations become increasingly global, executives are more frequently responsible for communicating with multinational audiences. These audiences may range from conferences of 500 to face-to-face meetings with a handful of key business associates. To be effective when communicating with such groups, executives need to understand the cultural differences that shape their listeners’ perceptions of the words and images that they use so that their presentations are properly received.

One of the most important distinctions to understand is the difference between “high context” and “low context” cultures.

China, for example, is a high-context culture. This means that in order to understand the meaning of any communication, it is very important to understand not only the words, but also the age and status of the person who uses them, the body language that person employs, the history of the relationship of that person in the organization, and many other factors. In a high-context culture, information is embedded and people have to extract it.

The United States, on the other hand, is a very low-context culture, where people speak explicitly. Say what you mean and mean what you say. It’s very specific and direct.

Chinese speakers start out with background and lead up to a concluding statement. In doing so, they view themselves as considerate, face-saving (for themselves and their audiences), cautious, prudent, and cooperative.

American listeners often find such presentations confusing, illogical, passive, imprecise, and deferential … and usually stop listening. They do not see the structure of what is being presented. Similarly, Chinese people who listen to American presentations also stop listening, but for a different reason -- five minutes into the presentation they already know the conclusion. But they find this direct approach rude, inconsiderate and illogical.

Each approach has particular virtues. The Chinese, with their high-context culture, excel at pattern recognition. Did you ever marvel at drivers in Shanghai or Hong Kong as they maneuver adroitly through the crowded, bustling streets? They can process lots of disparate information at the same time. When it comes to a problem that’s ill-defined, the high-context approach works well. When the problem is well-identified, the direct, low-context model works very well. The two approaches serve different purposes.

Among global corporations, however, the issue is not just how Americans communicate with Asians or Europeans; it’s also how East Asians (from China, Japan, or Korea) communicate with South Asians (from Bangladesh, India, Pakistan or Sri Lanka) and Southeast Asians (from Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam). More and more, global corporations are establishing functional or business unit headquarters outside the United States, because that’s increasingly where the intellectual and production resources are located. India, for example, is a center for offshore information technology, while China has become a manufacturing headquarters for companies around the world.

As a result, international executives are more routinely communicating with diverse audiences through a variety of channels, including speeches, presentations, face-to-face meetings, telephone conference calls, Webcasts, and e-mail. To be effective, these executives need to understand how their listeners culturally process information -- and adjust their communications accordingly.
 

Career advancement is not without risk -- at least not for executives who move from one organization to another.

Like ironworkers building skyscrapers hundreds of feet above the ground, newly hired executives often have high-risk jobs. Many are recruited as “change agents” to infuse vitality into moribund organizations. Others are hired to lead start-up or turnaround situations, or to manage mergers and acquisitions.

Studies have shown that upwards of 40% of such hired executives fail in their first year and a half on the job. They either perform significantly below expectations, resign voluntarily or are terminated for performance.

In many cases, the hiring corporations themselves contribute to executive failure. They recruit the wrong people, are unclear about their expectations for executive success, fail to give honest feedback, make inadequate assumptions about cultural fit, and have no formal process to assimilate new hires into their organization.

Even the most competent executive would find it challenging to succeed against this backdrop. Too often, however, newly hired managers compromise their chances for success by making one or more of the following major mistakes:

They don’t build the right relationships. One of the most important steps when joining a new organization is to win support from those whose opinions and actions will be instrumental to your success. This cuts across all organizational levels as well as to people outside of the organization, from directors on down. Newly hired executives also need to spend sufficient time with their staff to gauge both their strengths and their support. It doesn’t help anyone to appear to be aloof, impersonal, all-knowing, superficial, or disingenuous.

They don’t focus their efforts carefully. There’s a lot to be said to securing quick and significant wins. I’ve seen too many executives fail because they get caught up in activities that will not have a strong and visible impact on the organization. These executives also fail to develop short- and long-term strategies with specific goals that they can execute and attain. They try to accomplish too many projects at one time, and wind up getting distracted by people or issues that will not support them or their goals.

They make (the wrong) assumptions. In today’s fast-changing business climate, it’s risky to assume anything about a new organization. Executives should not assume that what has worked for them before will work for them in a new corporate culture. Expectations, processes and politics for getting things done vary greatly from one organization to the next. It pays to clarify expectations, deliverables and metrics; regularly check for others’ reactions or opinions to proposals; and actively seek feedback.

Successful executives are able to turn ideas into action and achieve results. They are interpersonally and politically astute, and use the information they gather to make informed judgments and decisions.

Over the next few issues, we will explore how executives can successfully integrate into new organizations by focusing on their relationships with their manager, team and stakeholders.